clinton erskine bowles. gentlemen, wonderful to have you on the program. i want to first get to this. have either of you or together both of you been asked to participate in any way in these fiscal cliff negotiations? >> i've talked to most of the members of the white house. i met over the last couple of days with what's called the gang of eight, four republican senators and four democrat senators. i'm going to update alan as soon as this ends. >> senator, you have not been involved in these talks so far. >> he's an hour away. i'm all day away. i live in wyoming. today we're 2 1/2 hours late getting out of denver. i have to get my good threads on later. erskine is the numbers guy. he's done this before. he's the last human being on earth to balance the budget in 1996. he knows the game. he furnishes it back to me. he has my proxy on every occasion. >> we work on it together. >> i guess we're all trying to figure out why it is that the plan has gotten blown off for, you know, a bad choice of words, maybe. eve